tripso: 10 ways to save when feeding a family on the road
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tripso.com | 10 ways to save when feeding a family on the road.
Food for thought here! (Pardon the pun).
This is something we’re thinking about well in advance. Our local supermarkets sell cheap chiller bags for carrying home frozen goods. They’re light and they fold up easily. We intend to take at least one of these. Once we get off the plane at the other end, we’ll be looking for a supermarket to stock up on picnic supplies for our “car kit”. (If we can’t find a large supermarket, we’ll simply keep an eye out for an Ikea).
Our Car Kit List:
- Disposable Plates
- Possibly disposable bowls for breakfasts too
- Disposable knives, forks, spoons
- A cheap but sharp knife (ever tried slicing a tomato with a plastic knife?)
- Ideally a small cheap chopping board (see “tomato” above)
- Hopefully a thermos flask – filling up with hot water before you leave in the mornings can really save on the cost of hot drinks during the day.
Our accommodation will be a combination of one nighters, which will be hotels with no cooking facilities and cabin style for the longer stretches. It will be interesting to see if it is possible to do any baking in the cabins. I haven’t felt very inclined to do so before when on holiday, but whisking up a batch of muffins is a quick and economical way to feed a family snacks.
Something else we are doing ahead of time is thinking about the times when we will need to buy takeaways or fast food. For example, our flight into Manchester (UK) arrives at about 7 pm at night. We don’t know if there will be a meal aboard the plane (I suspect we will be sitting ducks for the snacks trolley). Therefore we’ve checked the airport website. A big thumbs up to Manchester Airport for their website! I’ve been able to see exactly what food outlets they have, when they are open, and a menu even for one of them (go Giraffe). While looking at their website, I also realised it would be a really good idea to stock up on some muffins and cookies and fruit for breakfast for the following morning. All of this saves picking up the rental car, driving out of the airport and going “right, where are we going to eat?” and driving around hopelessly lost when the kids are starving.
And speaking of saving money when feeding families, keptwoman and I are currently engaged in a battle of the budgets! We’re aiming to slash quite a few dollars out of our food budgets before we even get on the plane. You can check out our little competition over here at Bring on the Beans!
Keptwoman had another great idea to add to the car kit and that was a toaster and / or a very small toasted sandwich maker/grill.
keptwomans husband also had a particularly nifty idea. You know those little one ring gas burner things you get with plug in gas bottles that you carry around in little plastic suitcases? One of them. And a cheapo wok. Voila! A portable kitchen.
Keptwoman is a total greenie though so the only disposable plates being used on our trip is when we are staying at a hostel in NY with no cooking facilities and a shared bathroom: ergo: nowhere to wash the stuff. Other than that we are going with the washable ones.
keptwoman’s last blog post..The cutest thing
Shopping for food is one of the great pleasures of being in Europe! I feel sorry for people who eat out the whole way around – they’re missing out on one of the highlights of the trip.
We generally ate whatever the locals ate for breakfast, eg coffee and croissant standing up so it’s half the price, and unless it was raining we’d have a picnic lunch. It’s such fun going around the delis and bakeries and grocers of different kinds, looking at how they do things differently, deciding which exotic foods to try today, making yourself understood while ordering two hundred grams of that cheese – no THAT one – in whatever the language of the day is. Then finding a nice park for eating, lolling, people watching, eating some more, a bottle of wine while the kids run around if there’s no driving in the afternoon … mmmmm … A light fleece picnic blanket is a nice extra.
On rainy days, student cafes are a good low-cost choice if you’re near a university. A lot more interesting than Maccas, and they usually have good teen-sized helpings. We went to an amazing one in Vienna where I got a schnitzel that I’d swear was half a calf.
We did eat out every night but then we were staying in places without cooking facilities so we had to. Kids will probably prefer having familiar food at least some of the time, and it’s nice being able to get little ones off to bed whenever they’re getting tired. I think the cabins are a great idea!
Having a picnic blanket is a very inspired idea! I never thought of that. And it wouldn’t have crossed my mind to try student cafes either. I can see if SGM reads this, we may well have to take an unplanned detour to Vienna!!!